Big fan of Omer's work and this is no exception, the most striking thing about it for me in the opening and despite a strong lavender presence it's the animalic undertones that really show themselves early and leave you under no illusion that Zeybek ain't fuckin' about. These animal notes are perfectly weighted, musky (and I do mean deer musk) mixture between sensual, cozy ambrette and mildly pissy, animalic musk. It reminds me of shangrilide and leathery aspects of castoreum, but cleverly dosed into a very clever fragrance which switches from an aromatic, herbal top, laden with hay notes into a kind of smoothed out, lightly metallic but creamy musk. It almost has shades of musk ravegeur in the drydown, floral, lilly like (probably the narcissus?) perhaps the sweet vanillic creaminess of tonka, which you really can't smell in the opening but is very prominent when settled. I get herbs, fennel, celery salt, spices, eugenol, cloves but it's all backed by that animal feel. I think it's very, very good, interesting perfumery and totally in keeping with the style of the perfumer and brand. His work often feels like a good curry, levels and waves of spice and flavour that build and develop on your palate.

This is exactly what I want from hyper-modern, avart garde perfumery and has such a fitting title for this bizarre stuff. It's a tale of two halves though because as much as I adore the opening and first hour or so of the experience, the drydown is not great for me. So the opening emerges in a low bit rate buffering of digital greenery and pixelated ozone, but then snaps into sharp focus, and electrifying HD 4k clarity. It's a Lucy in the sky, psychedelic, kaleidoscopic garden of cellophane foliage and translucent bell pepper/tomato hybrids grown in Matrix style tanks full of ruthlessly efficient, synthetic Chlorophyll. A touch metallic of course and the slight, zingy sensation of licking a battery or chewing tin foil with metal fillings. OFF TOPIC! Always wondered why people would say it hurts to chew tin foil with metallic fillings....to which my answer was always..."Well don't chew foil then nobhead!" It's really very simple. So as this wears on it becomes more of a wander through a cubist, Tron nightmare, on that Slo-mo drug from Judge Dredd or the first stage of Sonic the Hedgehog but as if it were a virtual reality tour of some holographic Zen garden, only it's all glitchy and narrated by Max Headroom. See I can't even do TRULY futuristic imagery more like what 80's & 90's pop culture thought the future might look like. However, what initially evoked the acid fuelled, swinging Beatles track in the opening, soon becomes more like Radiohead's sombre and sentimental 'Fake plastic trees' and not because of overtly synth or plastic notes, which are undoubtedly there...because I really like that about it. The drydown is actually more creamy and natural with a white floral, hand cream and vetiver combination which for me is a bit sickening and seemingly comes out of nowhere, giving a bad jolt to what was a pretty euphoric trip up to a point. Cyber Garden interests me because it's a fragrance built upon a simple premise, look at the metallic green shine of the bottle, read the name in coded font and when the smell delivers the aesthetic right into your nostrils and directly into your brain, you immediately get this perfume! It's the Olfactory equivalent of Saw or Phonebooth or Snakes on a plane... HIGH CONCEPT. If you can't explain the central plot in a single sentance then I don't want to know, and it's too complicated. The only downside is that fragrances are kinda all about those tiny details that make up for plot holes, clunky dialog and bad acting. Sadly this falls apart for me but it does transition and change into something I really couldn't smell in the opening so I guess it's clever in that respect? I sort of want it....but I know I'd hate the drydown when wearing it but damn Costume National what a way to excite this jaded fragrance fan!

Now I've been very nice about this line but in truth there's only really two/three of them that are truly interesting and this is one of them. This is not typical of immortelle at all, it's not as leathery but has the lightly floral, honied touches with a mixture of fresh fig and mild coconut nuances of fig leaves. For me this is a combo that works brilliantly and I don't recall smelling anything like it. For that reason I rate this perfume highly, but I haven't worn it properly or lived with it so I'm not going to commit entirely. Very impressive though from what I see as a bit of a fringe private collection scent.

This fragrance is spectacularly good. Truly a gem among a line that is very overlooked in truth. Many brands have these 'private' or 'exclusive' collections and I often thought it was a cash grab or something they must be seen to do, due to the success of TF, Chanel, or Dior's popular privee exclucifs. Namely D&G and Hugo Boss, companies who have fairly established mainstream lines but can't quite drum up the interest in their posh ones...At least that's how it appears to me. I'd say Gucci suffer from this only to a lesser extent, with their 'The alchemist's garden' line framed a bit more cleverly with packaging etc... Anyway...I'd seen a few of these before and tried the Ambre Tigre (which I subsequently tired again and loved despite being hard to get hyped about yet ANOTHER Amber) but an extensive session with all of them gives a picture of a really accomplished and well thought out line which achieves that most difficult thing, perfumery familiarity and skill but avoid cliches and do something new. Are they massively innovative? No... but they do enough and the quality of blend is evident in nearly all of these offerings comparible with Guerlain or something in the fact that they are not made with the intention of quick, easy impact, a leather one, a rose one, etc... So here's the incense one! haha No but seriously as much as I gravitate towards 'incense' I'm actually a bit weary of it's tropes so it's nice to get something like this which avoids them. Opens with a light airness of spice, immediately warm and a light cinnamon edge from tolu balsam and a dense labdanum, this alone sounds like a cliche but it's somehow dry with woods and more sweetness of vanilla which builds and builds until you are left with a base of it. Despite this bezoin/vanilla/labdanum this scent doesn't come off like an amber, it's light and ethereal, wafted smoke and bite from incense but presented with restraint. I thought it was great. Has the magic touch and my seal of approval for sure.

Wow! to say this has a macaron note is very telling, the whole texture of this piece is like the feel of a macaron. Solid, but that's merely the facade, the gossamer thin shell with a much more caked powder, and springy, spongey interior, lurking underneath. It has the characteristic light flavouring of a macaron too, in this case pears and red berry aldehydes, maybe a touch of apricot? It's a real diffusive, musk driven piece, sweet, warm, tender but sparse kinda powdery, futuristic, gourmand. I think it's inextricably...brilliant! Yeah.... I know. That's two Ariana Grande fragrances in a row that I reckon are pretty decent. I think it's just my taste at the moment and attempts at appreciating the technical aspects of very, single molecule driven compositions. I kinda like a stack of aroma chemicals that add up to more than the sum of their parts, seeming easy to achieve or generic to some, when in actuality they are moments or traces away from being something very lovely indeed. It's not incredible, but I'd like to try it again and god forbid I have one of these massive, embarrassing bottles in my collection. It would be like a fabulous blight in my wardrobe. A 'My little pony' unicorn among your hermetically sealed, mint condition, Original, He-Man & Star Wars collectables. It's tempting though, as it's dead cheap and I probably would find it easy to wear.

For starters.... I love this fragrance. I didn't know I did, because despite being aware of it for years I'd never bothered to seek it out. At this point it's worth mentioning that I own PdM Oajan which is a very similar, I'd say louder to the point of spinal tap, more honied, spikier more obvious cinnamon, just more of everything and that came nearly a decade after Jean Claude Ellena created this little beauty. So this has the Cinnamon but it's more reserved, an amber like resinous body of benzoin, sweetness from vanilla but the heart is a darker, honied tobacco sort of smell, laden with spice. It's completely adorable and what I like is that it has all the stuff I love from Oajan but in softer focus, not a brutish and more quietly, respectfully humming away. There's a Daniel Josier which to me is an even more dense, less complex version of Oajan and despite all the similarities between these three, wearing (owning) them I suspect it becomes easier to tell them apart. Ambre Narguile appears to be the genesis though and a very lovely thing JCE brought into the world, I'm enjoying it massively today.

So....I used to be really good at keeping up with new releases and Lalique was a brand I struggled with because they are barely stocked in the UK anymore. Well that's not true EVERY UK based online discounter has them but I'm not blind buying even at a reasonable price. I mean stores that used to carry them, simply don't anymore and that coincided with this release so I never got to sniff the stuff. I love Lalique as a brand too, many of the fragrances are super classy works, even if they are super cheap raw material wise (yes a formula boasting 80% Iso E Super, I'm looking at you!) and Encre Noire is an example of that. To me it smells very faintly of citrus, dry graphite and a smoky dose of Cedar & Vetiveryl acetate...oh and IES. That's it's genius though! Anyway, enough about the original what's this one like? I found it to be an incense type of opening more like a GPH I or a CdG Man, that kind of thing. Peppercorns flung onto some impossibly white hot, cosmic, griddle pan, instantaneously sublimating on impact into a diffuse, peppery, vapour. Then a cypress/cedar, some sandalwood, spicy, softness but more of that raw, gloomy day, Vetiver from the original. I like that Lalique have continued with the dreary and bleak EN aesthetic when they could quite easily just make the crap that other brands churn out, yet they refuse to do so, even the 'sport' flanker in this line had the original at it's core. I think L'Extreme is alright.

I've heard Youtube reviewers and the usual crowd, spouting about this fragrance and I can't say I necessarily agree that this is some clean, soapy, linen fragrance. I thought the opening was like a creamy, dense, vanillic body which had been unsweetened by strange licorice and celery salt notes, before the heart becomes woody but lightly sweet. I didn't find this particularly powdery but it does have those herbal touches and is somewhat powdered. Maybe? I'm surprised how good it is! Not that I don't like other stuff from Josh or this brand, I do, but I guess the spoilers I'd heard about it didn't really fit with the scent I found on my skin. The heart is more woody (must be the teak wood listed here) and the tenacity of sweet vanilla notes remain at the end but it's by no means a total sweetie. I enjoyed it, had a somewhat 'designer' feel. Now I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that and I really do hate to toss tedious, meaningless labels around only to then cross pollinate.... but on this rare occasion I make an exception because that's how I feel about it.

The Original was Original, giving weirdness of nagamotha or papyrus or something against the waxy uplifting orange and orange blossom, it was a real grower on me. This however, is rubbish. Soooooooooooooooooooo boring. Acquatic piddle. Not a fan. Shame.

Having liked the This is Him, I'm wandering into Z&V releases with a reassurance that they will at least be passable. That's a dangerous state of mind BTW. From this I got a fairly 'generic' (I do hate that term but it's fitting in this instance) opening of heightened, diffuse citruses and musk resulting in a sigh of...oh well it's not terrible but they appear to have peaked in their first release...how sad. But wait a moment (or an hour or two to be more precise) and you will be treated to a very rounded and appealing, synth santal and mild, creamy florals in the base. It actually had me thinking, wow this isn't half bad, coupled with the fact that it has a central note among all this that I'm not sure what it is, and it's unique, alluring. It's sweet and kind fruity but always maintains a none too vanillic sandalwod. I'd have to try it again but This is love Him, ain't too bad from an initial test out on my arm.